They tell me stories I can BELIEVE and somehow they have always informed me, metaphorically at least, about my life.

So why am I having so much trouble turning off cable news these days?

Because no play, film or even TV series can touch the Mueller vs. Trump countdown that is being broadcast 24/7 on your small, medium or perhaps even big screen in your home.

Me, watching Rachel Maddow, EVERYDAY

Don’t get me wrong – I’d be thrilled to not have this particular story. But now that it’s here, I can’t turn away.

People say:

You’ve got to do it – for your own sanity!Actually, they don’t say it – they admonish it – and me.

To which I say/admonish back:

WHAT SANITY????

I keep repeating to anyone who asks or who will listen:

These are insane times. Is the proper response to continue life as you have always known it???

Luckily, I don’t have children. Not so much because I wouldn’t be there for them. But more like —

What if one of them was a Trump supporter??????

I honestly don’t know how the Keatons did it.

Oh, don’t reassure yourself. I absolutely would NOT leave them alone. And if they pushed it too far I most certainly COULD leave them. Or at least stop talking to them. My mother stopped talking to me for four months after I relocated to Los Angeles for a job and temporarily moved in with my Dad and stepmom. And this was 10 years after they BOTH remarried!! And Jimmy Carter was president!!

So DO NOT say that I don’t have it in me. I have a lot in me.

And more.

The Never-Ending Story is not a fantasy novel or an OLD movie from 1984.

A different white, hairy monster

(Note: Yeah – 1984 is 34 years ago so it now qualifies as OLD. And Note the year – 1984??? George Orwell? The David Bowie song? AND – yes, I AM seeing connections that make perfect sense that YOU. ARE. MISSING).

#THEREALDONALDTRUMP is the malevolent force in OUR NEVER-ENDING STORY and the only one who can stop IT from permeating the globe and destroying US is not a BULLIED CHILD – as it is in the book (Note: Ahem, ANOTHER magical connection you didn’t see or won’t acknowledge – bullies? Children?). It is the former head of the Globe’s chief law enforcement agency – ROBERT MUELLER.

And another SIDE NOTE: Just know that if this is over soon (though as Carrie Fisher once wrote: Wishful Drinking) it is NOT too late for Harrison Ford to play him in the movie. Mueller will be 74 next month and Mr. Ford just turned 76. So by Hollywood standards Mr. Ford is actually a bit young for the part. Nevertheless, I am SURE he would take it —

…If he got final script approval.

…And his choice of director.

… and if he can’t, we know De Niro is game #efftrump

Yeah, IF this is ever over (Note: A BIG if) AND we all survive, the movie industry will be back to business as usual. Even I would like to dream that we’ll all be a lot more benevolent by then but if the post Drumpf years really do turn out to exist the one bromide we’ll all be well-advised to even more strenuously live by will be to watch our backs.

Even the Harrison Fords among us.

I had two favorite snippets this week from our ongoing, ad-infinitum, never-ending narrative. One occurred during the 10-hour testimony of my new fantasy boyfriend, FBI agent Peter Strzok, before the House of Representatives.

Hey Pete… DM me. <wink>

Mr. Strzok was called on the carpet by countless Republican congressmen for sending text messages criticizing Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign to his former mistress, Justice Department attorney Lisa Page, which were no more inflammatory than numerous public statements made by some of those very same sitting Republican Congressman at the time about the sheer guttural horror of allowing Trump anywhere near the Republican nomination for president, much less the White House.

Still, each elected official kept coming, trying to rattle, corner and otherwise grandstand Mr. Chair Strzok into admitting his political bias disqualified him from doing his job properly just as they simultaneously and continuously disproved this theory by showing their own extreme right leaning biases over and over again with each heated accusation they threw his way.

Disgusted that his grilling of Strzok was not even slightly cracking the trained-to-be-uncrackable veteran FBI man, Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican Christian conservative from Texas long referred to as…well…any number of pejorative terms for crazed by his House colleagues, at one point angrily stared at Strzok and sputtered:

I can’t help but wonder, when I see you looking there with a little smirk — How many times did you look so innocent in your wife’s eye and lie to her about Lisa Page!?….

um… YIKES

To which Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman (D-NJ) finally shouted back at him:

….What is wrong with….You need your medication!!!

And you wonder why I can’t, okay won’t, turn away.

The other example was a soundless 30-second video snippet that encapsulates everything one needs to know about the ways in which Trump is able to insult everything not only within inches of his grasp but many millions of miles beyond.

After dodging 250,000 protestors in London demonstrating against him and his policies with various sizes of Baby Trump floats in diapers, our Electoral College president was scheduled the next day to meet 92 year old Queen Elizabeth for a brief tea at Windsor Castle.

It’s real.. and it’s spectacular

As the Monarch stood outside under a canopy, periodically glancing from side to side, dressed in her signature suit, gloves, hat and handbag, #Drumpf arrived a full 15 minutes late, not only leaving the nonagenarian waiting in an overly bright daytime sun but causing her to check her watch several times. Even after he finally arrived he couldn’t find a way to walk gentlemanly beside, near or behind her – only in front.

seems about right… #chompchomp

This is not only a grievous mistake in Royal protocol but, as everyone but him knows, a common courtesy when you find yourself beside 92 year olds of any station.

It is also one more reason I can’t turn off cable news. That daily reality check is the ONLY thing that is keeping my thoughts and me from TRULY going INSANE and not falling into some awful alternative universe of a dreaded NEW NORMAL.

Though she only managed to make it to the “dorms” with teenagers who tried to sneak-migrate into the U.S. alone.

Bad weather kept her away from the places where they keep the toddlers (six months is the youngest) and all others under 10 years of age who actually did travel here with Mom and/or Dad…or an aunt, uncle, or friend.

Churchgoers might see this as an act of God but I fully believe it was literally MOTHER Nature stepping in and saying enough is enough in her own unique language.

As all of us with powerful mothers understand, a play date is likely to end the second She sniffs something fishy is going on.

We call that the Betty Draper test #sheisnothavingit

And everything was odious about this week – from the cages, to the secret middle of the night evacuations of ankle monitored youngsters to seventeen unnamed U.S. cities they’d never been in, to the presidential press conference dragging out surviving family members of those killed by drunk, illegal adult immigrants and trying to connect it to the recordings of jailed crying orphaned babies everyone in the country had heard or heard about except Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen.

Well… she eventually heard them. #nojustice #nosleep

All the way down to that Zara trench.

At one point Holly, our @notesfromachair editor, even texted me to ask, Why even wear a coat when it’s 80 degrees and humid in every city she was in that day?

My only thought was her mate likes every abode and any plane they travel in to be ice cold because, these days especially, he’s sweating a lot.

#hurryup

Well, it’s better than any explanation being offered about the coat. Certainly, it’s more believable.

We like to tell ourselves it’s different when children are involved. Staunch liberals will counter and say, um, NO, you mean WHITE children – it’s ONLY different when WHITE children are involved.

Sure, that may be part of it. But really, that’s also an um, no. Because there were 20 six and seven year olds killed by an unbalanced young man wielding an assault weapon at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, ALL but one of them lily WHITE, and NOTHING changed about guns, gun control or school shootings on a national level. Except that they multiplied.

So truly the children – brown, black, striped or white – can’t be the primary scapegoat on this. This one is on us – the adults in the room.

We WANT what WE want WHEN we WANT IT – and when we have the POWER to get it.

Or we WANT what WE HAVE and DON’T WANT to give an inch or two or three to ANYONE ELSE for fear that we will lose OUR power and MORE will be taken away FROM US.

we all have an inner moustache twirler #dontdenyit

This could be erroneous thinking. A compelling counter thesis could easily be argued convincingly from the other side and at the very least shift topic or more fully win you over with one or more better examples or theories.

Well, that’s all well and good on the high school debate team – where I remember they always used to assign you to argue for something you loathed in an effort to get you to open your mind to another way of thinking.

OK.. maybe I wasn’t the best on my debate team #canthelpit

Hmm, perhaps that’s the answer. Treat us all like h.s. debate students, but — the remedial kind!

Um, NO. Again. That strategy is already being used nationally – heck, it even explains the coat – but has only driven us further apart.

I took any number of classes in school that involved persuasion (Note: OK, stop rolling your eyes) and there is one basic strategy offered from most of them. There will always be a significant group of people who will ALWAYS DISAGREE with you. You will NEVER CONVINCE THEM. In fact, they probably WILL NOT HEAR ANYTHING you say.

Forget them.

TRUTH

On the same token, those who ALWAYS AGREE with you will only get you so FAR. They’re great to hang out with or grab a meal with or build an idea on, but they WON’T DO MUCH either in furthering your agenda.

What you WANT TO DO is to reach out to those who YOU DON’T KNOW, or those who are scared or hiding or disengaged for THEIR OWN REASONS. LISTEN TO THEM. They are reachable if you INCLUDE THEM, ENCOURAGE THEM to become part of your argument.

And for those of you LESS HOSTILE at the moment THAN MYSELF, there is still yet another group of people. Those with whom YOU DISAGREE on MANY THINGS but are STILL OPEN to HEAR YOU on INDIVIDUAL ISSUES.

Consider this an early valentine

They are in the PERSUADABLE GROUP if you approach them without a Zara coat and with the kind of patience you’d want exhibited towards you if your way of life was being questioned on some alien planet by any number of judgmental ETs.

I will resist the obvious metaphors about the latter. Suffice it to say they are personal and, in moments like this, often got me benched on the debate team.

Just know that any world in which Paul McCartney still sings Beatles songs, as he did this week in Liverpool, is one that is worth saving.